Friday, May 18, 2012

Public Policy Polling: Iowa result on gay marriage is good news for Libertarians

As we're finding in our polling across the country right now voters in

Iowa are moving more and more in support of gay marriage to the point where they're

now almost evenly divided on the issue. 44% of voters think it should be legal, while

45% believe it should be illegal. That represents a six point shift on the margin from

when we polled the state in October and found 41% of voters supportive and 48%

opposed.

Gay marriage has been legal for a few years in Iowa now and 62% of voters say that it's

had no impact on their lives one way or the other. 24% claim it's had a negative effect

while 14% say it's a positive thing. We've never found a very significant portion of voters

in a state that has gay marriage say it's had a bad effect on them.

Moreover, even though President Obama enjoys a comfortable lead in the State, the most interesting data point to emerge from this survey is that 9% of voters said they either voted for a third-party candidate in 2008 or cannot recall if they voted for Barack Obama or John McCain.